I have the feeling of hiraeth every day. It's a word every Welsh person will understand if they have ever left Wales with little hope of returning. There is no literal translation. So here is my interpretation and what it means to me.

How can I wring an extra paragraph or by some miracle page from each scene taking place? What level will I sink too to enable that word count to creep towards the target? There are few worthy compromises that can be made when stretching the imagination, and the following are the least worthy of all.

I love the lead up to Christmas. The actual day usually falls far shorter than what I imagined it could be. And I've had 45 of them and none have fulfilled my dream Christmas Day. So I should have learnt by now from other lessons in life. But I keep dreaming, and hoping, and saving.

My damn life got in the way again and this correspondence is so overdue it might as well have been posted in the 19forties without a stamp. Even striking postmen or postwomen (do postwomen strike?) couldn't have delayed it for much longer.